AshevilleNorth Carolina

November 7—11, 2018

About photo+sphere

photo+sphere, November 7–11, 2018, in Asheville, North Carolina, explores the environment through photography and photo-media. This art and science event includes nationally known speakers and panelists, exhibitions, films, and performances at venues throughout Asheville.

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary event, photo+sphere brings attention to how we see the environment and the role humans play in determining the future of our planet.

The photo+sphere team consists of six independent artists and scientists. This event is a project of MAP (the Media Arts Project), an Asheville-based 501(c)(3) arts organization.

photo+sphere Keynote Presenters

Mel Chin

The Arctic Is Asheville

Mel Chin’s conceptual and visual art “erases the boundaries between art and activism, aesthetics and the environment, and the individual and his or her community.” Chin has received numerous grants and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, as well as the Penny McCall, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller and Louis Comfort Tiffany foundations. His work has been featured in the acclaimed PBS series Art21. The exhibition Mel Chin: All over the Place is at the Queens Museum of Art in NYC from April 8 – August 12, 2018. Two major projects Unmoored and Wake debut in Times Square in July 2018.

Sharon Harper

Some Observations on Movements of the Earth

Sharon Harper works with photography and video, exploring how technology mediates our relationship with the natural world and generates perceptual experiences. Her photographs are in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and the New York Public Library. She is a 2013 recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in Photography and is a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.

Justin Brice Guariglia

We Are The Asteroid

Over the last two decades, the artist and environmental activist Justin Brice Guariglia (b. 1974) has developed a unique transdisciplinary art practice working in collaboration with scientists, philosophers, and journalists to explore important ecological issues of our time. In 2016, Guariglia became the first artist to fly on earth science missions with NASA. His solo show Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene, which received an NEA grant and debuted at the Norton Museum of Art in 2017, is currently on display at the Fisher Museum of Art at USC in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. His text based work entitled “WE ARE THE ASTEROID” is currently on display in Storm King Art Center’s climate-focused show Indicators: Artists on Climate Change, and as a public art installation on the Chicago Navy Pier. Guariglia is a Howard Foundation Fellow at Brown University and an Artist-in-Residence at the Anchorage Museum and Woods Hole Research Center.

Sonic Retreat—a workshop in the Smoky Mountains collecting field recordings, video and photographs culminating in a collaborative event.

Picturing Purity—an exhibition looking at purity myths. From the untouched female virgin, to the uninhabited pristine forest; these myths construct an untouchable other in tension with a lustful outsider.

The Cloud Library, Volume I—a photographic exhibit, archive, and resource center focused on the physics and poetics of clouds in art, science, technology, and the imagination.

photo+sphere Partners and Sponsors

photo+sphere encourages creative collaboration to address important concerns about our community and environment. THANK YOU to our sponsors, contributors, and community partners.

photo+sphere and Asheville

W.H. Jackson/Detroit Photographic Company 1902

Grant Goodge/NOAA 2010

Widely recognized as an arts destination, Asheville is also home to one of the world’s largest archives of climate data—the National Centers for Environmental Information-Asheville. Western North Carolina is a hub for climate research, science-based forest management, conservation, and a quality of life that reflects these efforts—an ideal location for this perfect creative storm.